Striped Angelfish Pics

[Dirk]

Hi Gerhard,

As promised, I am going to show you some pics of my striped angels. My main interest lies in wild-type angels and not so much in the hybrids although I do keep black angels. I find that the fancy hybrid angels are all so inbred and have inbreeding defects as a result of which they require a lot of fixing by breeding back to wilds in order to get them healthy again. I am busy with such projects at the moment. The most stunning striped angelfishes are of course altum angels but they are more difficult to keep than discus and they only advised for the advanced aquarist. Just for the record I serve as a moderator and scientific advisor to the international angelfish forum TASG, but their website is down temporarily at the moment.

Since 1986, I have bred a strain of wildtype striped angels into which I bred some new stock on two occassions since then. I have selected them for size, coloration, finnage and parenting properties and these fishes can successfully raise their own young without any problems. Check out these images, first one is of a male, second one of a female and third one of a pair with young.

Kind regards,

Dirk

[Vis]

Hi ProfDankie.I really like the last pic of the pair. The brownish shoulder makes them look especially good.Quick question on the photos. There black stripes seem to fade upwards? Is this justan effect or how they look? All the other angels I have looked at the stripesseem to fade down.I actually have 3 juveniles at the moment with that same brown gold shoulder and the stripesstopping 3/4 down.Gerhard

[Dirk]

Hi Gerhard,

in this strain there is no fading of stripes down the fishes. They can vary the amount of black in the stripes as you can see on the top fishes, but they have strong black contrasting lines which are shown very strongly when they have young. Note also the fins, the tails have the full fin extensions top and bottom and the ventral fin has fin extensions. You rarely see this is LFS sold angels because the babies are raised in overstocked tanks where they nip at each others fins and then they never grow out these extensions nicely.

One thing I wanted to add was that I have sold these angels to a lot of folks and this is having an effect on what I see in the LFS, which is quite heartening, at least this is improving local stocks, but I have more to show you after this......

Kind regards,

Dirk

[Vis]

I have seen like most people how angels can make there stripes disappear completely.Really need to get some of these from you. Will try and post some of the LPS ones I have currently.

[Dirk]

OK, Gerhard,

The pic below is of a Pterophyllum scalare wildcaught angel that was imported from Peru (the other fishes are Geophagus altifrons). The angels were imported by William Jones from Potchefstroom who started a big shop there but who seems to have dissappeared. These fishes are also referred to as Peru altums which just causes confusion as they are not Pterophyllum altum at all. I bought about ten of these fishes and although they were very pretty, they were also very aggressive and really hammered each other all the time. They did have perfect fins though, long fin extensions and this fish specifically had sort of reflective lines next to the black lines which were very attractive. The fish I specifically show was a female and she spawned once with another wildcaught fish and once with one of my domestic angels. Unfortunately due to the aggression of the wildcaught fishes and also of their babies they did not reproduce again and the last of these fishes died earlier this year.

I will show you more pics of the crosses between my domestics and these wilds later.

Kind regards,

Dirk

[Dirk]

Just another pic to show you the reflective scales on this fish next to the black lines.




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[matteffect]

Wow prof your angels are really beautiful

[Dirk]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the compliment. I must be quite honest if I say that I get almost more of a kick out of my angels than out of my discus. I will post some more pics after this.

Kind regards,

Dirk

[matteffect]

Awesome would love to see some more picks

[Vis]

Hi

Here is the current group I have. They are way prettier then I can photograph them. And the buggers wont stand still. Will try again in daylight.

Group of 6

2 Silver striped
3 Silver striped with brown/gold shoulder and background.
1 Zebra